As more and more companies offer telephone access to a customer service staff, problems associated with waiting on hold have grown. Such problems include, for example, excessively long waits, full queues that cannot accept additional callers, and accidental disconnects. These problems have engendered a high level of frustration and ill will among callers. Some companies now routinely inform calling customers who are on hold how long a current wait is expected to last before a service representative will be available to take the call.
In general, when a caller is placed in a call queue, the caller's queue position is dependent upon the receipt time of the call at the vendor location. No consideration is given to the identity of the caller or the potential value of the call. While this is a democratic way to handle incoming calls, it may not be good for business. For instance, a large number of low business value calls may be in a queue when a high business value call is received. As a result, the high business value call is subjected to a long wait while the low business value calls are answered--with attendant dissatisfaction on the part of the high business value caller.
Some companies offer various levels of speed-of-answer services to their customers. This is especially important whereon hold time can tie up valuable business activities of the caller. Thus, a company might offer one "for cost" telephone number for a service which guarantees no more than a five-minute wait and another, less expensive, telephone number which guarantees that an agent will be available in no more than a one hour wait. Incoming callers are thus charged more for the shorter response guarantee time than for calls with a longer response guarantee time.
To implement an automatic call answering/queuing system of the type described above, manufacturers offer a range of products. Ordinarily, automatic call answering systems include a private branch exchange (PBX) which processes an incoming call and identifies the number dialed using a dialed number identification service function (DNIS). Once that information is stored, the PBX checks a routing database for DNIS routing instructions and routes the call to an automatic call distributor (ACD), which may be a separate entity or be incorporated into the PBX's functionality. The ACD logs each call in memory and assigns each call a rank based on, for instance, the order in which the call arrived. If there are currently N calls in a queue, the ACD normally assigns a next call received from the PBX to position N+1 in the queue.
When the PBX indicates to the ACD that an agent is available to answer a call, the call residing at the top of the queue in the ACD is removed and sent to the PBX, which takes the corresponding incoming line off hold and routes the call to the available agent. The ACD then moves up each call in the queue and the process continues.
If the system is provided with an automatic voice response capability, it includes an interactive voice response unit (IVRU). The IVRU is utilized to periodically communicate with incoming callers, indicating position in the queue and a waiting time until the call is expected to be answered.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,020,095 to Morganstein et al. describes a call processing apparatus which queues calls that are waiting to be connected to a service position. The apparatus calculates a queue position and wait time and transmits the queue data to the calling party. U.S. Pat. No. 5,444,774 to Friedes describes an interactive queuing system for a call center and collects initial information from the caller while the call is in the holding queue. The information input by the caller enables the apparatus to query a database and to retrieve additional information needed to service the caller's call. That information is then displayed to a next available agent when the call is received by that agent.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,561,707 to Katz describes a telephone interface system which is adapted to select or qualify a set of callers, acquire data from the callers in the set and to statistically analyze the acquired data. U.S. Pat. No. 4,788,715 to Lee describes an automatic call distributor system wherein calls waiting in a queue are informed of expected wait time until connection to an agent. The announcements are periodically updated to reassure customers that they are progressing in the queue. The customers are also given the opportunity to leave a message if they do not wish to wait in the queue.
While the prior art teaches a method for enabling a caller to arrange, prior to a call, for access to a priority queuing arrangement, there is need for a queuing control system which will enable a call center to arrange calls in a call queue in an order based on criteria other than the time of a call.